Cold boot problems

[Gary S]

OK, so I've been trying to avoid returning the machine....but looks like it's heading that way. Basically on cold boots, the machine hangs on the bios screen and won't boot to windows. This only happens on the first boot of the morning after being powered off overnight.
PC is always powered off from the wall too when not in use.

Brief spec :
i9 12900k.
Asus Rog z690 gaming f mobo.
16gb x 2 Corsair ddr5 dominator ram.
Asus Rog Strix 3090.
Corsaiar 1000w psu.
Corsair fans and aio, all usual RGB stuff etc.
1tb nvme (boot drive).
256gb m.2 from my old machine as extra storage.
500gb Samsung 870 ssd for added storage. The last two drives I added myself and are being read and written no issues.

Things I've done:
Verified it was booting from the correct drive.
Removed my added drives to rule out any conflicts or issues.
Reseated the RAM.
Turned off the xmp profiles in bios.
Loaded bios defaults.
Updated bios.
Cleared cmos.
Turned off fast boot in Windows and bios.
I then ran the Asus ootimizer/ai overclock software (this gave me 1 successful boot).
Tonight, back to normal, hanging on bios screen. Peripherals non responsive but the keyboard is lighting up, mouse is getting power and the USB headset is also being powered while this is happening.
Fans, RGB etc come on. 1 short beep from the mobo, which i believe is standard for asus.
One green light remains on the mobo, which I believe is the "boot" indicator thing.

Each of the above steps needed to be tried on different days as the issue is only on cold boots. So I've been testing stuff for well over a week.

After this happens, I need to hit the power button to turn the machine off, and then turning it back on for a second attempt at booting and all will be fine. It will perform and game with no issues.

I'm leaning towards hardware problems now. Funnily enough, before my pc was despatched, it was delayed due to boot issues in testing. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a dry joint on the mobo or a faulty psu.

But then again, this may not explain how I can game on it without issues. I've seen the GPU draw well over 400 Watts, so the psu wouldn't be faulty...would it?

I'm open to ideas guys, before I need to return it for rma.

😟

 

[Martinr36]

if you've updated the bios without PCS consent you may well have voided your warranty

7.9	We reserve the right to suspend the warranty or refuse service if your Case, Motherboard, CPU or BIOS have been replaced without authorisation. Any tampering, repair or modification by unauthorised personnel voids the warranty.

 

[Gary S]

if you've updated the bios without PCS consent you may well have voided your warranty

7.9	We reserve the right to suspend the warranty or refuse service if your Case, Motherboard, CPU or BIOS have been replaced without authorisation. Any tampering, repair or modification by unauthorised personnel voids the warranty.

I contacted them before updating the bios, plus it was the latest one for the mobo off the ASUS site. It made no difference that I can tell. It was flashed successfully and everything is operating as it should still, with the exception of the cold boot....this problem remains.
Interestingly, I left the computer for about 10 minutes earlier in its usual hung state. When I returned to it, it had loaded windows. It is like the first start up is causing the issue. The PC is in a cold room....so I am wondering if this extra cold temp is causing a problem.
That being said, normally in a hung state, when I restart it right away via the power button, it powers on right away. So this could rule out the temperature thing.
Add to the fact that boot issues were present in testing.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I contacted them before updating the bios, plus it was the latest one for the mobo off the ASUS site. It made no difference that I can tell. It was flashed successfully and everything is operating as it should still, with the exception of the cold boot....this problem remains.
Interestingly, I left the computer for about 10 minutes earlier in its usual hung state. When I returned to it, it had loaded windows. It is like the first start up is causing the issue. The PC is in a cold room....so I am wondering if this extra cold temp is causing a problem.
That being said, normally in a hung state, when I restart it right away via the power button, it powers on right away. So this could rule out the temperature thing.
Add to the fact that boot issues were present in testing.

When you said you verified it was booting from the correct drive, were there any other devices in the boot manager before the boot drive?

When you say it showed as a problem in testing, what do you mean?

 

[Gary S]

When you said you verified it was booting from the correct drive, were there any other devices in the boot manager before the boot drive?

When you say it showed as a problem in testing, what do you mean?

When I added in my other drives, one was picking up as the boot drive, I then changed this in BIOS to pick up the correct boot drive as it was shipped from PCS. This was all fine and a minor change.

When I contacted customer care, they didn't give me any information as to what the testing boot problems were.
I'll give them a call again and see what they suggest. It is looking like a return at this stage I think.

 

[SpyderTracks]

When I added in my other drives, one was picking up as the boot drive, I then changed this in BIOS to pick up the correct boot drive as it was shipped from PCS. This was all fine and a minor change.

When I contacted customer care, they didn't give me any information as to what the testing boot problems were.
I'll give them a call again and see what they suggest. It is looking like a return at this stage I think.

Can you take a picture of your boot priority?

 

[Gary S]

Can you take a picture of your boot priority?

I can later, but I have it set to priority 1 being the boot drive, priority 2 is disabled . So it only has the one priority option....which I think is correct?
I updated the intel nvme drivers just there and ran the intel drive health checker (quick scan) and all showing healthy. Next step may be to move windows onto a different drive...it is the only settings type step I have not tried.....I think.
If it was a faulty boot drive, I am thinking it would be more than just an overnight issue.
I started the computer there after being off for 6+ hours and no problem at all. It is only when left overnight for 8-9 hours+ that it becomes an issue.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I can later, but I have it set to priority 1 being the boot drive, priority 2 is disabled . So it only has the one priority option....which I think is correct?
I updated the intel nvme drivers just there and ran the intel drive health checker (quick scan) and all showing healthy. Next step may be to move windows onto a different drive...it is the only settings type step I have not tried.....I think.
If it was a faulty boot drive, I am thinking it would be more than just an overnight issue.
I started the computer there after being off for 6+ hours and no problem at all. It is only when left overnight for 8-9 hours+ that it becomes an issue.

Could you also post the full specs from the order page?

 

[Gary S]

Case
Corsair td500 RGB (comes with 3x corsair LL120 fans
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 16-Core Processor i9-12900K (3.2GHz) 30MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI (LGA1700, USB 3.2, PCIe 5.0) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair Dominator DDR5 5200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
24GB NVIDIA Asus ROG STRIX 3090
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2200 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair h115 capellix 280mm
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Extra Case Fans
1x 120mm CORSAIR LL120
OS Windows 11 home.


I made some edits as I changed the spec a few times before it was built lol.

 

[Dan.C]

Try bumping the Vcore to 1.3. Watch the temps when you do but it should be ok.

 

[Gary S]

OK so I done a wipe and reinstall of windows. Had one failed boot today and one successful. It appears that when I have the computer plugged into the wall directly, boots seem ok...but I need to do more testing to confirm. When using a power strip I get failures. I even tried a heavy duty extension lead that I use on garden tools and this failed. I will do some more tests of just having it in the wall.
Again, this boot failure is not easily repeatable so I will just have to see. If I get one boot failure from the wall socket... I think an RMA will be the only option from here.
I am now fully convinced this is hardware related - but have no idea what.
One of the bsod dumps showed up as a grapics card shut down or something (according to the guy from PCS helping me earlier).
I am on the latest driver for the card 511.xx I think it is. But this may be a mute point, as when I am on gaming, the machine is pretty steady I think.

Beyond just testing it from booting from the wall socket...I have no more ideas.
With regard to the power extensions I tried, one was a surge protector. 13 amps, 250volts. PC and 2 monitors plugged into it. One motitor was a high refresh 144hz 34inch 21:9.
The other extension cable I tried (into a different wall socket entirely) also failed. On this occasion the PC was the only thing plugged into it. 13 amp 240volts rating on this one.

My PSU is 1000w - but on boot etc....I am sure the PC is not juiced to this level at all.
I am out of ideas.....

 

[Gary S]

OK so I had the machine plugged directly into the wall and have been getting the same results.
My guess is maybe something up with the motherboard. Yesterday, during one of its bogey startup hangs, I decided to just leave it for a few minutes. After about 5 minutes it did eventually get into windows. Once in windows I decided to open a program to see how it performed. So I started with simple stuff like icue (corsairs rgb program) and the program hung pretty much right away. Trying to force shut down the program was non responsive. I could not access task manager either. Windows became non responsive to clicks and windows key on keyboard was also not opening up the windows start menu. I had no option but to power cycle again from the on/off button.
It is as if when the machine did finally limp through the startup procedure, it landed in windows all messed up (carrying static or a discharge anomoly or something.

One other thing, I notice the ram sticks also go weird with their rgb specifically when icue autoloads when windows starts up.
For example, I could have my rgb set to say, remain a static blue color, but a portion of a ram stick will remain a different colour. If I cycle the profiles in icue, all is OK. It has happened with both ram sticks on 3 or 4 separate occasions...so I am wondering bad ram modules or ram slots on the mobo messed up.
Here is a picture of what I mean regarding the ram. My RGB was set to blue, all case fans, ram, GPU etc. but the bottom of one of the ram sticks decided it wanted to be yellow.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Can you take a picture of your boot priority?

As above?

 

[Gary S]

As above?

Here is a 4 min video just now. I went to get the boot priority for you and had a 2nd failed boot. Hopefully this video can explain the problem and you see it in action.

 

[Martinr36]

What's on that small m.2 drive, and how's it partitioned, just wondering if it's an old system drive and still got got system partitions on it, it could be confusing matters

 

[Gary S]

What's on that small m.2 drive, and how's it partitioned, just wondering if it's an old system drive and still got got system partitions on it, it could be confusing matters

It was a boot drive from my previous machine running win 10. I did a full format on the drive and now it is just there as additional storage (unused at the moment really), and I also had attempted boots with both of the additional drives removed (ie just the PCS installed 1TB m.2 boot/windows C: drive....same outcome.

 

[Martinr36]

Was just a thought, have you tried a clean windows install, deleting all partitions, using the Windows media tool

 

[SpyderTracks]

It was a boot drive from my previous machine running win 10. I did a full format on the drive and now it is just there as additional storage (unused at the moment really), and I also had attempted boots with both of the additional drives removed (ie just the PCS installed 1TB m.2 boot/windows C: drive....same outcome.

That secondary drive hasn't been properly formatted as still contains a boot sector which is a separate partition. I'm guessing just the data partition was formatted. The system is still recognising it as a boot drive. It's worth deleting all partitions and fully wiping it.

I would reset the BIOS to optimised defaults as a start after that, you definitely don't want the optimiser set.

 

[Gary S]

That secondary drive hasn't been properly formatted as still contains a boot sector which is a separate partition. I'm guessing just the data partition was formatted. The system is still recognising it as a boot drive. It's worth deleting all partitions and fully wiping it.

I would reset the BIOS to optimised defaults as a start after that, you definitely don't want the optimiser set.

I did try this previously. I had optimized bios defaults set, all overclocking removed and had the 256gb drive out (as well as the samsung drive). I have tried almost every combination of hardware and settings over the past 2-3 weeks.
Something is off for sure. Even the ram sticks above, random glitches in windows (sometimes I would have to press a button a second time for it to action), minor stutter in games from time to time (could be normal but this happens without the GPU or CPU being stressed). I have also noticed lately that screen ghosting is really bad on my monitor. I know this could be a monitor issue, but I never noticed it as bad and it is very noticeable, even with slower moving images. The UFO test looks awful. It is a 144hz monitor and the ghosting/streaking is no-where near as bad when I put the UFO test onto the 60hz screen.
Both monitors are hooked up using display port. I have to turn up overdrive on the monitor to make it look a little better, still not great though. Anyway, not sure if they are related issues....but as I say, I never noticed this on my previous PC and the monitor is maybe 4 months old or so.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I had optimized bios defaults set, all overclocking removed and had the 256gb drive out (as well as the samsung drive). I have tried almost every combination of hardware and settings over the past 2-3 weeks.

Appreciate that, but to do any troubleshooting it needs to be a clean baseline, doesn't really matter what's gone before.